[Peetwo]

GlenB embuggerance update: 6/06/23

Via the AP emails:

04/06/2023

Dear Ms Spence,

Thank you for the letter, dated 25 May 2023, extending the invitation to meet with my wife and I, to discuss the profound and harmful impact CASA’s actions have had, and continue to have, on us and the mental burden we carry for all the persons impacted so unnecessarily by this, including many valued and loyal staff, customers, suppliers, and students who depended on us.

I believe that the meeting would be protracted and take up to 4 hours to attend to the matter in its entirety, and to minimise any ongoing ‘ping pong’ subsequent to the meeting, which obviously best serves both our interests.

We fully appreciate that you will have existing commitments, but our preference would be to delay the meeting until your schedule would accommodate a meeting of 4 hours’ duration. I do not anticipate that it would exceed 4 hours, but I do believe it will consume the majority of the 4 hours. The allegations and the associated impacts are significant as you will appreciate.

As you may be aware, the industry initiated a crowdfunding page to assist me in this matter and those funds could be used to facilitate travel for my wife and I to Canberra, noting that may be your more preferred venue, although obviously a meeting in Melbourne is an option. I will leave the determination of time and venue to you. My wife and I will accommodate any preferred option provided we can have 14 days’ notice.

Once you have the opportunity to determine a suitable date and venue, could you also please advise me of any other attendees that you anticipate joining us on the day. At this stage, my intention is that only my wife and I attend. As a request, could I ask that the Chair of the CASA Board, or his nominee also be present, and I have forwarded this correspondence to the CASA Board. I feel there should be an awareness at Board level, although I will respect your determination on this matter.

I initially intended to provide the fairly brief response to your letter. However, I feel compelled to address some of the statements made in it. By allowing those statements to go “unchecked” in written correspondence, it may incorrectly suggest that I accept those statements when clearly my wife and I, do not.

CASA’s 23 October 2018 letter and restrictions was sent on the pretext that CASA had suddenly become aware of some new and important information about the arrangements between APTA, its alliance members and the individuals and aircraft utilised in flying training operations.

In fact, as has been proven, the truth is that CASA was fully aware of the fine detail of those arrangements and worked ‘side-by-side’ with APTA, for a very long time, assessing them against regulatory requirements for exactly the purpose of providing a “single AOC, multi base, multi entity, approach to flight training using personnel that were not necessarily my employees, and, ultimately, recertifying them to the new legislation in April of 2017. The suggestion in your 25 May 2023 letter to the effect that CASA somehow did not know about or was not on notice of those arrangements until some sudden revelation sometime in 2018 is simply wrong in fact.

I ask that you consider the obvious possibility that the ‘the right hand didn’t know what the left hand was doing’ in CASA, and that it is neither appropriate nor reasonable for CASA to expect an ‘outsider’ like APTA and my family to bear the brunt of the capricious consequences of internal CASA dysfunction and disagreement.

I also ask you to consider that the motivation may have been more “sinister” than the right hand not knowing what the left hand was doing. It is possible that a CASA employee or small group of CASA Executives may have been deliberately prolonging a resolution, to in fact cause maximum commercial harm to me personally.

I believe that it is worth reiterating our perspective prior to the meeting to ensure that the meeting can be as effective as possible because me must arrive at the truth.

Regarding your first dot point. ‘CASAs October 2018 notice of intention to decline APTAs significant changes applications was not a decision to close APTA. and was a reasonable and appropriate action for CASA to take in the circumstances”.

I must clarify this. The notification of intention to decline APTA’s significant change applications for the addition of further bases in CASA’s letter dated 23 October 2018 which you refer to in your correspondence, was not, of itself, the issue which caused so much harm.

Admittedly that alone was concerning, particularly in light of the fact that CASA had approved multiple bases for me over the previous decade, as well as for many other flight training organisations across Australia, in what was an identical proposal. The complete reversal was totally unexpected, and unjustified, and more concerning because it was directed at my business only, and not others against all precedent.

Most of the harm however was caused by the surrounding restrictions placed on the business by CASA and the unjustifiably long duration that those restrictions remained in place. CASA was fully aware of the commercial impact of the trading restrictions, because I notified CASA in writing on multiple occasions of the impact

These CASA imposed trading restrictions remained in place for eight months, costing me and my family well in excess of $10,000 to $15,000 every week they were in place to avoid staff redundancies, and to meet staff salaries. Throughout the 8 months I had no avenue of appeal against those restrictions. I was completely at the mercy of a CASA employees opinion.

The business was allowed to continue operating in the short term based on CASA issuing a number of subsequent “interim approvals” to allow me to continue operating. These short-term interim approvals were as short as 24 hours, but never longer than 90 days.

These “interim approvals” impacted significantly and immediately on the business by preventing APTA taking on new members, and the previously CASA approved bases unable to enrol new students into courses, past the expiry date of the CASA interim approvals. This effectively prevented the business taking on any new customers, as most courses were of 18 months duration. A course of 18 months obviously being far in excess of the duration of the interim approvals on the business that CASA had imposed. Please understand that as a Registered Training Organisation (RTO), these restrictions impacted significantly, and unnecessarily on the organisation.

For clarity, CASA placed restrictions on APTA’s business in its entirety. The entire business was given only seven days’ certainty of operation. This was much much more than a proposed notice to reject two significant change applications.

CASA advised that all previously approved bases were now determined to be “unauthorised” despite the fact that they had been operating for, in some cases, as long as a decade, and all of those operations had been assessed and certified by CASA previously against regulatory requirements applicable to APTA as the sole AOC holder.

CASA even included Melbourne Flight Training in its list of “unauthorised operations”, even though Melbourne Flight Training was always, and remained the original APTA flying school covered by APTA’s original AOC. Melbourne Flight Training was merely the name of the entity whose name changed to APTA. I hope that this can be explained to me at our meeting.

Additionally, as you are aware CASA placed an administrative “freeze” on processing any regulatory tasks for the business in its entirety. These included upgrading of CASA required Key Personnel, not processing requests for courses waiting to be added, and refusal to process applications for new flight simulators that were essential to course delivery. This “Administrative Freeze was placed on the business in its entirety.

Additionally in that correspondence from CASA in October 2018, I was threatened with prosecution because, according to CASA, APTA had facilitated operations in contravention of regulatory requirements. CASA also wrote to APTA’s customers and advised them that APTA was operating unlawfully, and that they could also be subject to prosecution. All of this, and yet I had no right of appeal.

If there were any safety concerns, CASA would have adopted a different approach. The approach adopted by CASA was most certainly the approach that caused the most commercial harm and reputational harm to my family and our business, while achieving absolutely no safety benefit. If it were a safety concern that was driving CASAs actions, CASA should have prevented all flying operations, instead CASA restricted new members and students enrolling, but permitted existing students and bases to continue trading albeit under short term interim approvals. The safety issue or concern, if they existed cannot have been significant if existing customers and students were permitted to remain in the short term.

The restrictions were harmful, and entirely unnecessary and CASA was not compelled to take that course of action. Restrictions that I believe were placed unlawfully on the business, and could have and should been lifted at any time, This single action would have allowed me to return somewhat, to business as usual.

Consider also the reputational harm caused to the business when the industry becomes aware that CASA has imposed the most substantive restrictions placed on any flying school ever. Reputationally a decade of developing an industry leading reputation of safety and compliance is destroyed.

For many years I have led industry to believe that I am fully CASA approved, as I was. I have taken on many additional bases with full CASA approval over the previous decade. Many have seen me do it successfully during that decade, and they have placed their trust and confidence in me. Suddenly, after a decade of operations and with no concerns having ever been raised CASA advises me that the entire structure, I had invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in, and three years of working side by side with CASA to meet the new regulatory procedures and is approved for that very specific purpose. It has been redesigned with CASA for the new regulations, fully approved to the new regulations, yet is declared unlawful less than two months after those regulations are introduced.

So, although CASA’s 23 October 2018 letter was not technically a decision to close APTA, the practical consequences of CASA’s surrounding actions effectively crushed the financial and reputational viability of the business and sent me broke including the loss of my family home, along with three hundred thousand dollars contributed by my parents to maintain staff salaries and prevent redundancies during the eight months that the trading restrictions are in place.

I urge you to read that original notification of October 2018. It was the initial contact, it advised that the entire business was operating unlawfully, had 7 days to operate, and me and my members were potentially subject to prosecution, and all bases including mine was now determined to be “unauthorised”. This notification and subsequent approach by CASA were much much more than a proposal to reject the most recent application to add two new bases. It was effectively notifying that my business of ten years would not be permitted to continue operating.

Regarding dot point two.

“CASA had required evidence of contracts with other operators as evidence of operational control before a request for contracts was made to APTA”.

That statement is misleading, and I feel compelled to address it. The truth is that CASA never required evidence of contracts from other flight training operators.

I have confirmed this with operators that had been doing exactly what I was doing over the previous 25 years. All advise me that CASA was not involved in commercial contracts at all within the flight training environment, and never required commercial contracts from them.

On this matter, I believe that CASA has provided false and misleading information to the Ombudsman investigation. I believe that you have also been misled Ms Spence.

On this matter, I intend to make an FOI request for any existing commercial contracts that CASA has required of any operator, where the operator has had to outline matters of operational control within a commercial contract which CASA is not a signatory to.

This is fundamental. Matters of operational control are specified in the CASA approved Operations /Exposition that CASA has control over.

Matters of operational control are not specified in “commercial contracts” because CASA is not a party to those commercial contracts.

The significance of this is that the Exposition is the Master CASA approved document specifying matters of operational control.

A “commercial contract is not.

The content of that commercial contract can replicate the CASA approved procedures within the Exposition, but it cannot be the primary source location to stipulate those procedures of operational control. Not without the changes going into the Exposition first.

Pending the release of my FOI request, this is something that you may choose to initiate from within your office.

The significance of this matter is that every single piece of legislation and all additional considerations for this exact operating structure that I had adopted for a decade were already fully contained within the CASA approved Exposition. The truth is that there were no deficiencies. My hope is that prior to our meeting you can discuss with the CASA Executive Management that were involved in my matter, and very clearly and specifically identify what procedures were deficient or absent in the CASA approved Exposition, that CASA wanted to address in the commercial contracts, and not in the Exposition.

It would be ideal if you could present me with some scenarios that CASA feels had not been considered or attended to.

Furthermore, the statement, “before a request for contracts was made to APTA” does not accurately represent the situation. It suggests that I did not have contracts and that CASA made a request for contracts.

The truth is that despite there being no previous requirement from CASA on any operators operating in the same structure that I adopted, to provide commercial contracts, I had supplied them to CASA on multiple occasions over the previous years to CASA as a courtesy. Until now, CASA showed little interest, as they were “commercial contracts”

By legislation those matters of operational control, safety etc must be contained within the Operations Manual/Exposition as ours were. I have spoken to other Operators that adopted the same model as mine and they assure me that CASA never require contracts. I can see that this may be a point of contention, and prior to our meeting I will make a FOI request for the contracts that CASA has advised the Ombudsman’s office that they held, so that we can clarify this matter on the day.

It was APTA that initiated the commercial contracts years prior, and I had provided them to CASA as a courtesy. There was never any objection from me to fully resolve the contract issue. The issue was that CASA was unable to provide me the requirements that they wanted in the contract.

Please note that on 30 April 2019, with the crippling trading restrictions in place for 6 months, CASA informed me that CASA had only now issued instructions to external legal service providers for the provision of ‘model clauses’ for contractual arrangements that would meet the minimum regulatory requirements imposed by CASA. Up until that point, CASA was effectively demanding that APTA guess what words CASA wanted to read in contracts in order to satisfy CASA. Recall that EVERYTHING was already attended to in the CASA approved Exposition, and perhaps that is something you can clarify at our meeting.

Unfortunately, by the point at which CASA finally took an ‘appropriate and reasonable’ approach to its contract clauses demand, I was exhausted financially, physically and mentally. I could not bear the prospect of CASA coming up with yet another and different “appropriate and reasonable” “regulatory approach” at it did shortly afterward when CASA determined that all personnel operating under the AOC MUST also be employees, which very clearly has no basis in law, and CASA have no requirement in the legislation that anyone be an” employee”. The very plain and simple truth is that no-one must be an employee, and that includes all positions including instructors, CEOs, Head of operations, safety Manager etc. No-one.

Regarding dot point three.

“Request for contracts from APTA was supported by legislation and civil aviation regulation and was not unreasonable.”



On this point it is very important that there be a very clear distinction between the what the CASA Exposition is, and what it contains as per the regulations, as mine did, and what a commercial contract is.



I maintain that there is no legislation at all that suggests or requires that matters of operational control are contained within a commercial contract.



As somebody who has operated within the flight training environment for over 25 years, that requirement is as bizarre, as it is absurd.



May I respectfully request that at that meeting you are able to direct me to the legislation that you refer to.

Regarding dot point four.

“CASA did not mislead the ombudsman ‘s office.”

Until now I have steadfastly maintained that Mr Aleck has been responsible for providing false and misleading information to a Commonwealth Ombudsman investigation. In recent correspondence you suggested that it was in fact the CASA ICC that was responsible for providing information to the Ombudsman’s Office. I hope that at the meeting we can clarify who, and what stage, which personnel or CASA Departments were responsible for providing information to the Ombudsman’s Office investigation.

At this point I will say this: If, as you say, the “regulatory approach” that CASA took after 2018 was “appropriate and reasonable”, that “regulatory approach” should have been taken by CASA during the processes through which CASA worked ‘side-by-side’ with APTA and certified all of that which CASA subsequently determined to be “unauthorised”. If CASA had done that a decade prior when we opened our first base or during 2016, 2017, and 2018 as I redesigned APTA with CASA to meet the new regulatory structure, it would have become clear that CASA was not going to permit me to continue adopting the structure that I had been using over the previous decade.

Had CASA not encouraged me to develop APTA, and revalidated APTA 18 months prior, and if I was made aware that the process was at substantial risk of turning into a complex and expensive regulatory nightmare, I would have abandoned the concept and my family and I would not have lost all that we have lost.

Instead, I was encouraged by CASA to believe the concept and the arrangements APTA put in place complied with regulatory requirements, without any mention of the “regulatory approach” you say was “appropriate and reasonable”.

Regarding your characterisation of CASA’s 23 October 2018 letter as “unexpected and unsettling”, please note that the letter effectively said that all that I had built, that all of the blood, sweat and tears I had shed, that all of the money invested by my family and I, that all of the work done with and by CASA to get it all certified, was all for nought. And I was a criminal.

A much-higher-than-expected electricity bill is “unexpected and unsettling”, Ms Spence. Losing an entire life’s work is devastating. That devastation has been wrought on my family and me. Your characterisation seemed quite trivialising, and it led my wife to insisting she participate in this meeting as one of the persons most affected by CASA’s actions.

These are all matters that we can discuss in greater detail at a professional and well-intentioned meeting.

I should point out that I have a YouTube broadcast on this subject going to air next Tuesday (6 June 2023) evening. Whilst I certainly don’t expect you to watch that live presentation, I will arrange for a link to be sent to your Office, and may I respectfully request that you view that prior to our meeting.

Ms. Spence, please be assured that I am not trying to be combative. But CASA has delayed properly remedying the injustice done to my family and me for too long, and we have paid a very high price for that delay, not only financially but mentally and physically. My wife and I hope that you will come to the meeting with a concrete proposal to bring that delay and associated suffering and trauma to an end, and ensuring that no other General Aviation Business is ever subjected to such treatment again. We look forward to the meeting.

At that meeting and to ensure we can both "cover as much ground as practical", may I respectfully request that you have access to the following documents, and similarly please advise if you have any suggestions or requirements of me.

• CASAs Regulatory Philosophy
• Copy of the initial notification sent to me. October 2018.
• CASA Regulatory Enforcement Manual
• Aviation Ruling
• CARs
For your information and as possible resources to review prior to our meeting, I draw your attention to the Crowd Fundraising page. Not so much for the monetary value of it, but the accompanying comments are revealing of this entire matter and demonstrate the widespread industry concern of this matter in its entirety. Admittedly many of the supporters are individuals I have engaged with whilst I worked in General Aviation, but many of the supporters are anonymous, and may not be personally known to me. Fundraiser for Glen Buckley by Cale Johnston : Glen Buckley vs. CASA (gofundme.com)

You will also be aware that I have restricted the discussion of this matter to two discrete pilot forums, rather than wider social media. Those two forums being Aunty Pru and PPRuNe. The PPRuNe thread on this matter has attracted well over 1,000,000 views and thousands of revealing comments by concerned industry participants, and a link to that thread can be accessed here. I appreciate that it is easy to be dismissive of such forums, but I sincerely believe that the associated comments by industry professionals must be considered in the wider context of this matter. Glen Buckley and Australian small business -V- CASA - PPRuNe Forums

If I may finish with this request. I asked my wife what a “blue sky” would look like. She wanted two things.

She wanted to walk out of our meeting knowing very clearly what it was that her husband did wrong because like I, she simply cannot understand “what I did wrong”. You will appreciate the connotations that surround a person having their aviation business closed down by the Civil Aviation Safety Authority, and we would like that clearly identified to us.

Secondly, my wife, like me, would like to obtain a full understanding as to why this entire matter occurred. Why couldn’t it have been fully resolved prior to CASA placing any restrictions at all on the business. Specifically, she would like someone to explain why this whole matter in its absolute entirety could not have been avoided by a well-intentioned discussion of less than 4 hours.

Again, I thank you for providing this opportunity, we appreciate the opportunity you have provided, and we look forward to a professional, respectful, and productive meeting at your earliest practical convenience. I hope that this correspondence has demonstrated the requirement for the meeting to be somewhat protracted.

Yours sincerely

Glen Buckley

And via the UP: https://www.pprune.org/11446407-post2632.html

[url=https://www.pprune.org/11446407-post2632.html][/url]

glenb

Global Aviator
You are correct, there is no safety case at all or any deficiency ever identified by CASA, and that is what makes this entire matter so outrageous.

The only single argument that CASA put to me was that all personnel operating under my AOC needed to be my employees. It was made to clear to me that if I made them all my employees, there would be no concerns. That was the solution.

That is not what APTA was designed for. It was designed for 10 entities to join my approval to operate to one set of procedures, and in all matters regarding regulatory and safety, it was the one organization.

It is that structure that CASA determined to be unlawful in my organization despite it being completely standard CASA approved practice, throughout my 25 years in the industry.

CASA have craftily confirmed there position that CASA must be satisfied. This was different. This was CASA becoming unsatisfied, but with no explanation.

Every single comprehensive procedure was attended to in our CASA approved Exposition. We were not new to this; we had been doing it successfully for a decade. There were no identified quality issues. If so they would have been initiated through a process.

This was a totally unexpected notification, with no prior warning whatsoever. It was a legal determination from Mr Aleck, or someone within his department.

CASA were fully satisfied with every procedure that i had written, they had peer reviewed, approved, and audited on multiple occasions.

It is all so totally unnecessary. It was not a quality control issue.

CASAs argument was that you cannot have operational control over someone who is not also an employee. Obviously i disagrree.

Highly appreciative of your involvement and support. Cheers. Glen

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glenb

Getting a lawyer

Wow folks, ive got everyone in my ear to get a lawyer, and I trully do ": get it".

I know that is the next step if it cannot be avoided.

It's a bit of a personal thing. The engagement of lawyers is the end of "good intent". The entire process moves to one of combat and no goodwill. My hope is that I can exhaust every single option that is available to me. Being let down by Local MP was indeed a big blow, but not all options are exhausted. There is the option of an Act of Grace Payment which may be an option to undo some of the harm caused.

Ms. Spences response regarding "attendees" from CASA will be very revealing and set the tone of that meeting. If lawyers are attending, then I will have lawyers, please be assured of that.
Ms Spence may choose to have Mr. Aleck present, but if that is the case I will have to clarify if he is present as one of the CASA employees i have made allegations against, of if he is present as legal counsel.

The nature of my allegations is substantial. Either way someone deserves to be held accountable.

Either one or more CASA employees have acted unlawfully, or I have. I have made many public allegations against Members of CASA senior executive. If my allegations are false, vindictive and vexatious, those CASA employees should initiate some legal action against me.

I was considering writing to Ms Garland my local MP, i note that Minister King has directed Ms Garland not to assist me in this matter. I am considering bypassing the Minister and writing to the PM directly requesting that a nominee from his department attend, as my allegations of misconduct are creeping into his MPs and Ministers. There can be no doubt that they are trying to cover up this matter. My correspondence and requests for meeting goes totally unacknowledged.

As a total aside, I'm sitting here in a 24-hour pancake parlor drinking far too much coffee.

Considering that the Ombudsman conducted a four-year investigation and found nothing at all wrong with the way CASA acted and no suggestions to any systematic improvements, Ms Spence would possibly not have met with me.

The only one that has found any potential "issues" is in fact the CASA Industry Complaints Commissioner. A man I have had the good fortune to engage with on a number of occasions. While the ICC does come under criticism for its structure, the incumbent is exceptional. Not because he agreed with me on some issues, but because he is a man of integrity, and good intention..

In recent correspondence Ms Spence suggested that the ICC had been responsible for providing information to the Ombudsman. I do not believe that to be true, and that is not what I was informed by the Ombudsman's office.

Very clearly i want to restate that I do not believe that Mr Hanton, the CASA ICC would ever provide false and/or misleading information to the ombudsman. I believe that Ms Spence is attempting to bring additional credibility to CASA regarding the information that they provided.

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Sandy Reith

Operational control

Quote Glen:- “CASAs argument was that you cannot have operational control over someone who is not also an employee.”

This is a nonsense argument by CASA, it’s plain that to be a member of APTA the business must follow the APTA procedures, procedures that the business is paying to have in place.

But much stronger still is the fact that CASA has an arsenal of highly detailed rules. Rules that it inappropriately persuaded Parliament to migrate practically the lot (mostly were misdemeanours) into the criminal code.

Some of our ‘criminal acts’ don’t even get a mention at all in the USA, and where any instructor, or group of instructors, may teach without any form of Part 141/142 AOC type permission.

How much more control do you need? And what is the point of it? Training is statistically about the safest type of GA flying, and it’s the resulting standard by testing that’s the real issue.

One could liken Glen’s APTA organisation to gaining a Council building permit and the follow up by the building inspector. The owner and builder and sub contractors don’t have to be Council employees.

To satisfy CASA perhaps a real time surveillance camera and two way communication with a CASA ‘expert’ throughout every flight? Talk about control freaks, they have no bounds.

CASA is out of control, the Board and senior management have shown that they are incompetent and irresponsible.

The Board has buried its head in the sand and is incapable of facing the truth of their failure to rein in the Iron Ring or stop the colossal damage inflicted by CASA on GA as a whole.

As for Ms. Spence she has one chance left to make recompense and save her reputation by meeting with the Buckleys and quickly acting to compensate, then reset CASA and cauterise where necessary.

Highly unlikely that good, but worth a shot, good luck Glen.

Finally tonight GlenB will be featuring with Clinton Mckenzie, via Youtube :

MTF...P2